Top Music Trends in 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic has turned our lives upside down in many ways. Music lovers are no exception when it comes to who has been affected by this, and 2020 has changed the way we enjoy music…potentially forever. It hasn’t been possible to attend live concerts and festivals so artists have needed to be resourceful in order to come up with different means of reaching their fans. There has been an upsurge in artists livestreaming their performances on social media platforms. Alternatively, you could go to music pubs like The Rocksteady to enjoy a pint while listening to music. There has also been an increase in artists making use of virtual reality technology to transport their audiences from their sofas to the front row of the audience, or even onto the stage itself! The rising trend for artists to use social media platforms to connect with their audience on a personal, as well as a musical, level is also something we can expect to continue. Fans are now looking for a much more immersive experience when they engage with music, and so this trend is likely to enhance the careers of those artists who take advantage of it.

There has also been an increase in Indie artists who are taking advantage of platforms such as YouTube and TikTok to find their audience. By grabbing people’s attention on these platforms, artists are working hard to gain new followers and produce content which keeps them wanting more and more. This is also leading to consumers being more interested in following Indie artists loyally rather than focussing on more commercially successful artists. There is something pretty cool about being one of the first to stumble across a relatively unheard of artist and supporting them in their music career. A rise in the number of Indie artists is also likely to lead to an increase in guitar-based music and that definitely can’t be a bad thing.

Artists have been taking advantage of the many lockdowns we have all endured to create new music. This means we can expect there to be a mass release of new music: could this be one of the few positive things to come out of the lockdowns? There is also likely to be a move towards artists releasing singles instead of entire albums. This is driven by a desire to get new music out to fans more quickly, and artists recognising the risk of releasing all of their new material at once and potentially being forgotten about over the subsequent months. This means that we can look forward to hearing much more new music more quickly, rather than having the long wait for our favourite artist’s new album release.

Another big trend we can expect to see in 2021 is the move away from genre-specific music. There is already a move towards this on platforms like Spotify where the playlists they produce are less focused on genre. In a similar vein there is also likely to be an increase in collaborations between artists who would typically never cross paths. This is really exciting as it means that we can look forward to hearing new sounds which haven’t greeted our ears before. With all these emerging trends we finally have something to look forward to in 2021!